How to save money using Riverbed

Times are tough.  As we look forward toward the next year, IT budgets have to be focused on doing more with less.  Now is not the time for expensive new infrastructure upgrades.  Rather, IT managers will have to find ways to extend the operational life of existing IT infrastructure.

In this environment, how does Riverbed help IT managers do more with smaller IT budgets?  In this blog I've summarized various ways how the Steelhead solution can prolong the useful life of existing network and storage infrastructure and save money.

1)  Server Consolidation -- Application servers are expensive to maintain.  They contribute to energy costs and consume valuable staff time.  Consolidating and reducing servers is one way to save costs, as VMWare is eager to point out.  However, servers are even more expensive to maintain when deployed at locations outside of the data center.  The Riverbed solution allows you to remove most or all of those remote servers, and consolidate them into your main data center.  The server centralization process then allows VMWare's virtualization tools to further consolidate hosted applications onto a smaller number of hardware platforms.  The cost savings allow your valuable IT staff to focus on more pressing needs instead of patching and maintaining remote application servers residing outside of the data center.

2) Branch Office Consolidation -- Riverbed's RiOS Services Platform (RSP) capabilities allow you to further consolidate branch office IT equipment. Microsoft-based services needed at the branch office, such as DNS/DHCP, Active Directory, and local Windows File & Print services, can be hosted on the Steelhead instead of a dedicated white-box server.  Similarly, security services such as firewall, secure web gateway, IDS/IPS, and VPN tunneling can also be provided by Checkpoint or Secure Computing software that is also hosted on the Steelhead.  After completion of these consolidation steps, the only pieces of IT gear needed at each branch office is a Steelhead and a Cisco router.  The result is a streamlined and cost-effective branch office from an IT operations and management perspective.   

3)  Reduce WAN bandwidth expenses -- Despite the economic downturn, the amount of electronic data being generated, stored, and accessed by enterprise applications continues to explode.  WAN bandwidth required to access that data is expensive.  But with Riverbed, bandwidth utilization can be optimized for a fixed non-recurring cost, yielding a positive return-on-investment in a matter of a few months compared to the alternative of increasing spending on WAN bandwidth.  In many cases, the subscribed WAN bandwidth can be reduced, leading to a direct and immediate cost savings.

4)  Extend the lifetime of your old Cisco routers -- How well are those old Cisco 2600 series routers in your branch offices working?  They're probably as reliable as the day you bought them some 10 years ago.  The Riverbed solution allows you to continue using them indefinitely, to support greater WAN traffic loads generated by the latest applications.  Unlike the case with Cisco WAAS router modules, when using Riverbed there's no need to upgrade to expensive new ISR series branch office routers.  When deploying Riverbed in an in-path configuration there is no change to the amount of workload faced by the router.  That old 80MHz Motorola RISC processor on your 2600-series router hums along just fine when paired up with a Riverbed Steelhead.

5)  Productivity Enhancement -- Doing more with less means enhancing the productivity of your existing employees.  Riverbed Steelhead appliances improve application performance for branch office and mobile employees, and thus enhance employee productivity that would otherwise be affected by slow application performance and long wait-times required to transfer data.

In this time of economic uncertainty, IT spending must be focused on those projects that reduce costs and extend the life of existing infrastructure.  Riverbed's solution can and has been used by thousands of customers to reduce costs, yielding positive return-on-investment in a matter of months.

Comments

[Benjamin Hyneck]

Some very good points Josh! I will round that up in a few simple words and pack it into my product slides :)

Cheers,
Ben